Heavy Duty Trucking, July 2016

QUICK SPIN The blue lines are a series of dots indicating my shift points Also shown are actual and potential mpg as well as gallons wasted and my shift score Its an easy to read representation of how well I was driving The score is based on how close I came to my potential best fuel economy not the actual mpg and fuel consumption information and identify underperforming or improperly specd trucks Much of what makes this work so well is how Vnomics interprets and displays the data Embedded in the system architecture are the engines fuel maps as well as the specs and ratings to aid in interpreting the data Layered over that are driver and environmental information that the system uses to determine if the engine is being operated as efficiently as possible For example the system knows if the truck is 400 or 450 hp whether its empty or loaded on flat ground or on a hill Thats all significant as the driving technique might be different in each case It doesnt use fuel consumed as a driver rating parameter but rather potential fuel economy Given where you are operating on the fuel map how close did you come to using the least amount of fuel needed to generate the required power for operation This immediately deflates any arguments about driver fuel economy rankings being unfair because they are subject to external influences Its really about whether or not the driver is operating the truck correctly Ben Stevens Vnomics sales engineer explains it this way If one driver is getting 72 mpg out of an algorithm determined potential of 75 hes within 4 of the target which isnt bad However another driver might be getting 61 mpg out of a potential 62 In testing Vnomics True Fuel I made two runs over the same course mostly stop and go driving with a little freeway time We were bobtailing in a leased tractor with a manual transmission the system works equally well on automated and automatic transmissions too I dont think the fact that we were bobtail matters because again the system was watching performance not fuel consumed For the first run I put my bad driver hat on and deliberately drove as poorly as I could hard braking idling too much taking gear changes to wildly high rpm running in the wrong gear etc It was so against my nature to drive like this that I really had to work at it My score was a 46 out of a possible 100 I thought it would be much worse given how badly I was behaving Stevens told me he has seen drivers with scores in the low 20s I cant even imagine how badly you have to screw up to earn a score like that Run 2 was the Good Jim run I diligently tried to keep the revs down accelerate gently minimize idling skip gears etc I did pretty well causing the alert to sound only three times for a score of 99 Incidentally each of the three times I messed up and over revved a gear I was talking to Ben This was a real an eye opener for me The conversation distracted me from concentrating on my shifting I can certainly drive properly when Im thinking about it but I could never maintain that level of concentration all day long And that may be the real benefit to True Fuel A good diligent driver gets a gentle alert from a not unpleasant sounding beep to remind him or her that they are slipping Thats a lot easier to take than finding out at the end of the month that you blew your fuel bonus HDT JULY 2016 46 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM SOURCE VNOMICS

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